1 The Cats that Surfed the Web Read online

  “She’d stroll in for a moment, groom the top of Iris’s head, and then resume her house patrolling,” she said. “By the way, who’s minding the fire?” Katherine asked.

  “Oh, that’s not a wood-burning fireplace. It’s a gas log. You turn it on and off with a switch,” he explained.

  “Good to know,” she answered.

  “Mrs. Marston should be down in a minute. She’s temporarily living in the house; she has full reign of the upstairs,” Mark said.

  “The entire floor?” Katherine asked.

  “No, just two of the rooms and a bathroom toward the back of the house. There are three other bedrooms besides those she occupies. A set of stairs in the back lead to the first-floor kitchen from Mrs. Marston’s section.”

  “There’s something that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why doesn’t Mrs. Marston take care of Abigail?”

  “She’s been suffering from migraine headaches. I’ve hired a temporary housekeeper to replace her while she’s been ill.”

  “How long has that been?”

  “Just a few weeks. Mrs. Marston has agreed to stay on here until we can find the individual who’ll move into this house. I’m hoping that person will be you,” Mark said, beaming. “Mrs. Marston wishes to move back into her apartment soon. You see, your great aunt set up a trust for her in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars,” he said. He whispered, “I think she’s anxious to have access to that money.”

  Katherine momentarily looked shocked, then said, “Will I meet her today?”

  As if on cue, Katherine heard a creak from the floorboards of the nearby stairs. She stepped back into the atrium and saw a woman in her mid-sixties descend the stairs.

  “Hello,” the woman greeted. “You must Katherine.”

  “Yes, and you must be Mrs. Marston.”

  “Vivian,” the woman corrected. “Mrs. Colfax called me Viv. I hope you had a pleasant flight. The weather forecast predicts twelve inches of snow tomorrow. I hope that doesn’t hinder your getting about and seeing our fine town.”

  “Twelve inches,” Katherine worried. “I hope I don’t get snowed in here. I have a very important meeting on Monday.”

  “I wouldn’t fret. The town is quite efficient about clearing the streets,” Mrs. Marston replied.

  “The main highways are rarely closed,” Mark added.

  “My daughter Patricia will be here soon. I want you to meet her.”

  “She was at the restaurant last night, and Katherine met her then,” he said.

  “She seems very bright. You must be very proud,” Katherine commented.

  “She’s very smart in school. She’s also very talented in the garden. Mrs. Colfax loved her herb garden. Sometimes my daughter would bake the most lovely black walnut cake. Your great aunt adored it. As a matter-of-fact, I do, too. She baked one last night. Would you care for some? When Patricia comes, I’ll ask her to make us some tea,” she offered.

  “No, that’s not necessary, Vivian,” Mark said. “We’re going to have coffee later.”

  “It was so nice meeting you, Ms. Kendall, and seeing you again, Mr. Dunn. If you’ll excuse me, I must return upstairs. I haven’t been feeling very well lately.”

  “Shall I help you upstairs?” Mark asked.

  “If you don’t mind. I’ve been getting dizzy spells, and I don’t like the idea of falling down these stairs.” She forced a laugh.

  He rushed to her side and took her arm. They slowly ascended the stairs.

  Katherine said good-bye, then slid open one of the pocket doors in the atrium. It opened to a living room crammed full of Victorian furniture. A rosewood sofa and matching loveseat were upholstered in mauve velvet. Nearby were gentleman’s and lady’s chairs covered in pink brocade. There were several ornately carved, walnut Rococo parlor tables; a few of the tables had marble tops. In one corner, a tall, walnut Renaissance Revival étagère had six shelves holding a collection of Lladro Mother and Child figurines. To the right of the fireplace was a huge portrait. Mark came into the room and stood beside her.

  “Is that William?” she asked.

  “Yes. William Colfax III.”

  “Handsome man. No wonder my great aunt married him.”

  “So you fancy dark-haired men with blue eyes,” Mark said, and then laughed. “I’d say your great uncle was in his thirties when this portrait was painted.”

  “So in reality, my great aunt fell in love with a man with snow-white hair and blue eyes.”

  “You stand corrected.”

  “Is Mrs. Marston going to be okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “Has she gone to a doctor?”

  “No, she is quite stubborn. I’m hoping her daughter will persuade her to at least see a physician and possibly have some tests done.”

  “Thanks for rescuing me from the walnut cake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m allergic to walnuts.”

  At the end of the long, narrow room, a door opened and a man in his late forties walked in. He was wearing a Yankees cap. He tipped his cap and said, “I just wanted to make you feel at home.”

  Katherine smiled. “You must be Mr. Cokenberger?”

  He extended his hand. “Cokey,” he said.

  Mark said, “Cokey has single-handedly done most of the restoration on this house.”

  “That’s quite impressive,” Katherine said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Cokey said to Katherine. “I worked for Mrs. Colfax for the past seven years. She was a great lady.”

  “Are you going to be working much longer in the basement?” Mark asked him.

  “At least another week tuck pointing. The interior wall bricks in the turret area have to be re-pointed from the floor up.”

  “What’s tuck pointing?” she asked.

  “It means you remove the crumbling mortar between the bricks, then put in new. It takes a lot of time,” the handyman answered.

  “Do you live in Erie?” Katherine said, making small talk.

  Cokey nodded. “I live a few streets over on Alexander Street. I have a key to the basement-level entrance at the back of the house. I come and go. I fix things, run errands, change light bulbs. Sometimes I’d drive Mrs. Colfax into the city and wait while she shopped. We’d stop at one of her favorite restaurants and have lunch.”

  “One more question,” she said. “Has this house been rewired? I have a lot of computer equipment, and I wouldn’t want to blow any fuses.”

  “The electrical system is state-of-the-art, 200-amp, and up-to-code. I installed it,” Cokey said proudly. “It was nice meeting you. I need to get back. I just mixed a batch of mortar downstairs, and I need to use it before it sets.” The handyman left the room, leaving a trail of dusty footprints on the navy-blue oriental rug.

  When he was no longer within earshot, Katherine said, “I don’t like that ‘have-my-own-key business, come-and-go.’ I’d want to know who’s in the house at all times. It would be easy for crims to hide out in this place.”

  “Crims?” Mark asked.

  She chuckled. “Criminals. Does Mrs. Marston tidy up after this man? Look at that rug.”

  “You seem to be just like Orvenia,” he winked. “She was a cleaning machine.”

  “You learn to be tidier than usual when you have as many cats as I do.”

  “That makes sense,” he said. “Allow me to show you the rest of the house. Let’s begin with the room in the back of the house. It has wood floors and oak wainscoting. It opens onto a carpeted sun porch. I think this room would provide a perfect home office space.”

  “Can I see the kitchen first?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, opening a door from the dining room that led into a 1950s kitchen, complete with red Formica table, matching chrome chairs, aqua metal cabinets, and a black-and-white ceramic tile floor.

  “I love it,” Katherine exclaimed. “Even the stove is from the ‘50s.”

  “We could always replace it,” he said.


  “Are you kidding? My family’s stove in Brooklyn looked like this. I hope it’s gas.”

  “Right you are,” he said.

  The tour continued for another thirty minutes. Mark showed Katherine every nook and cranny of the old house—the rear stairs from the kitchen, Orvenia Colfax’s bedroom and sitting rooms, and the guest rooms—all crammed full of Victorian furniture and adornments. She particularly enjoyed the attic, with its trunks of memorabilia and the gargoyle that stood sentry by the east window under a small floodlight fixture.

  “It’s so cool that my great aunt has a gargoyle,” she said, amused.

  “Orvenia told me it guards the house against water damage. Plus, I think she bought it as a joke for the neighborhood kids. They look upon this house as being haunted.”

  “Well, is it?” she asked. “Are there any ghosts?”

  “You have my solemn word that there are no ghosts in this house,” he said, with a hint of forced formality.

  “If there are, my friend Colleen will find them. She’s an administrative assistant by day, and a paranormal investigator by night.”

  “A ghost hunter?” he asked, slightly amused.

  “She belongs to the Irish chapter in NY.”

  “Interesting,” he said, non-committedly.

  “There are so many trunks up here,” she said, changing the subject. She opened one and found stacks of papers—receipts, bills of lading—the usual accounting files. Leaning against the wall was a tall, rectangular shape, covered with an old tablecloth. Katherine went over and removed the cloth, which sent a cloud of fine dust into the air. She coughed, then exclaimed, “What a lovely portrait. Who’s this woman?”

  Mark came over. “Why, I’ve never seen this before. The woman would have to be related to you, because I can see a resemblance. She’s got your dark hair and green eyes—”

  “This is uncanny. This has to be my great aunt when she was younger. How can we find out?”

  Mark turned the oil painting around and scrutinized the back. On the bottom of the canvas was a handwritten note. “You’re right. It’s your great aunt.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Orvenia Colfax—1932.”

  “Wouldn’t it be lovely to hang her portrait in the living room?”

  “Where would you put William’s?”

  “It can stay where it is. We could put my great aunt’s on the other side of the fireplace.”

  “Consider it done,” he said.

  “Oh, what am I saying? I’m acting as if I’m moving into this house.”

  “I hope you do,” he said seriously.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Here, help me put this cloth back over it.”

  They walked back downstairs, and Katherine watched Mark turn off the gas supply to the parlor fireplace.

  “Just in case Mrs. Marston forgets,” he said, extinguishing the flame. When he finished, he announced he was going to the basement to mention something to the handyman. While Mark was away, Katherine milled about the parlor, admiring her great aunt’s impressive Chinese cloisonné collection on the fireplace mantel. She was startled to hear Mrs. Marston and another woman arguing upstairs.

  “Leave him alone. He’s a married man,” Mrs. Marston demanded.

  “He was promised to me before she came into the picture,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Lower your voice. She’ll hear you. I saw that Jimson weed growing in the plant room, and a bag of seeds sitting next to it for anyone to see.”

  “How did you know what it was?” replied the other woman, haughtily.

  “I wasn’t born yesterday. That stuff used to grow wild on the farm. It can kill you! I know that young people are ending up in ERs all over the country because of it. Are you abusing drugs again?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m growing that as a part of my final research paper this semester.”

  “Then take it to the university, but wherever you take it, I want that damned plant out of this house today, you hear me?”

  “Whatever,” the other voice said dismissively. “I’ll take it out when that woman leaves.”

  “Where are you going? Come back here. I’m not done talking to you,” Mrs. Marston said angrily.

  A door slammed, and then another.

  The woman must have taken the rear stairs, Katherine thought. She hurried to the kitchen to head her off at the foot of the stairs, but was stopped by Mark outside the dining room door.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, startled. She hesitated for a moment, then said cheerily, trying to mask her curiosity, “I just heard Mrs. Marston talking to someone upstairs.”

  “Patricia’s here. I saw her car parked out back. Did you want to speak to her before we leave?”

  “Oh, no. That’s okay,” she said. “But I overheard a conversation between the two of them, something about a dangerous weed.”

  “Dangerous weed,” he said, startled. “I’ll look into it.”

  “Listen, Mark, if I accept the terms of the will and move out here with my cats, I don’t want something like that in the house.”

  “Understood. So let’s carry on. There’s more to see.”

  The day went on. Mark showed Katherine every piece of real estate and landmark in the town. He even showed her where he lived—a sprawling, ranch-style house a few streets away from the Colfax mansion on Lincoln Street.

  She was immediately shocked by the size of his cat, and remarked that he looked more like a tiger than a Maine Coon. While Mark pulled out his Blackberry and called the B&B’s owner to suggest more heat, Katherine remained on the sofa and petted his cat. The Maine Coon had taken an immediate liking to her. His loud purr rivaled the sound of a jet engine taxiing for a takeoff.

  Mark returned and said he had left a message for Carol at the front desk. Then he observed his supposed woman-hating cat sitting on Katherine’s lap. Mark remarked that he couldn’t understand what had come over Bruiser. Katherine explained that she had a way with cats.

  They had lunch in a quaint restaurant near the town’s limits. At six p.m. they attended a reception—in Katherine’s honor—at Mayor Ralph Newman’s residence. There she met the mayor and his wife, the town’s only physician and her husband, and a university professor who had written several books. Afterward, Mark drove Katherine to the city thirty miles away. They spent a few minutes at the mausoleum where Orvenia Colfax was interred, then had a quiet dinner in an Italian restaurant.

  By eleven p.m. when Mark dropped her off at the Little Tomato, Katherine was exhausted. She desperately wanted to curl up in bed—under the covers—because she was still chilled to the bone by the short walk from Mark’s car to the front door of the bed and breakfast.

  Once inside, Katherine hastened up the carpeted steps. She turned the key in her guest room lock and went inside. She immediately noticed a feather comforter draped over the wicker chair by the bed. She read out loud the note signed by Carol Lombard: “I apologize for the cold. Our furnace is doing the best it can, but when the temperature outdoors is ten degrees below zero, it’s very difficult to keep an old house like this warm. I hope this feather comforter does the trick. The key to warmth is layers.”

  “Warmth in layers,” Katherine huffed. A feather comforter and a heavy, quilted bedspread were already on the bed, she noted. She envisioned her body being crushed into the soft mattress by the tremendous weight of warmth in layers. Then she laughed and wondered if there were other twenty-six-year-old curmudgeons.

  The wind started to howl outside and whip around the bed and breakfast, rattling the antique windows. Katherine opened the heavy draperies and brushed some of the frost off the glass. She pressed her nose against the glass and looked outside. It had just started to snow. She began to worry. She envisioned mountains of snow preventing her from ever leaving Erie. She feared it would take months to make it back to Manhattan. She would miss her meeting on Monday. She snapped out of her reverie. I’m ju
st tired, she thought.

  She threw on her fleece pajamas and rushed to the bathroom. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, then headed back to her room. She jumped under the covers and fell fast asleep—with the light dimly glowing overhead.

  * * * *

  She had been dreaming. She was eating a Zaro’s carrot muffin at Grand Central Station during the early morning rush. Commuters scurried past. She studied the nameless faces, searching in vain for Gary, who promised to meet her before work. Gary was late, as usual. She finished her muffin, then grew tired of standing, so she started to make her way through the throng of people when she heard a steady staccato sound.

  “Iris,” she murmured, still asleep. “Stop that.”

  The persistent staccato sound continued.

  “Lilac, stop chattering at that damned pigeon and go back to sleep,” she said sharply, sitting up in bed.

  She sleepily looked around and realized she was still in Indiana. The intensity of the wind had picked up dramatically since she had gone to bed, but it seemed warmer. Something was hitting the glass of the window.

  She darted out of bed and ran to the window. She pulled the heavy draperies back and looked outside. She was startled by the total transformation of the landscape—a thick white blanket of snow covered everything. There must be a foot of snow out there, she surmised. And, the sound—rapping insistently against the glass—was sleet.

  Sleet, she thought. Ice storm, she worried.

  She watched the sleet pelt the window glass until she imagined her feet were frostbitten. She leaped back into bed, and immediately jumped out again to check her watch—it was only four a.m. She decided to sleep for another hour or so and quickly lapsed into a deep slumber.

  At eight o’clock there was a knock at the door.

  “Ms. Kendall,” a woman’s voice said. “I’ve brought you coffee.”

  “One moment, please,” Katherine said, jumping out of bed. She couldn’t believe she had gone back to bed and managed to oversleep. She opened the door.

  Carol Lombard stood outside, holding a tray with a coffeepot and a sweet roll. “You wanted me to wake you at eight?”

  “Yes, thanks. Please come in,” Katherine said.